Grandbaby-making etiquette

Monday

Jun 23, 2008 at 12:01 AMJun 23, 2008 at 11:15 PM

There’s a new etiquette when grandbabies are in the making because nowadays, it’s different. Couples don’t suddenly announce, “Surprise! We’re pregnant!” More commonly, we hear, “Guess what? We’re officially trying!” Rejoicing is not over an actual condition, but the anticipation of, “Hey, folks, heads up, we’re going down this road.”

Suzette Martinez Standring

There’s a new etiquette when grandbabies are in the making because nowadays, it’s different. Couples don’t suddenly announce, “Surprise! We’re pregnant!” More commonly, we hear, “Guess what? We’re officially trying!” Rejoicing is not over an actual condition, but the anticipation of, “Hey, folks, heads up, we’re going down this road.”

I recall that phone call from California to our home in Massachusetts when my daughter, Star, and her husband, Joseph, announced that they were now “trying” for a baby. Oh, there was a lot of happy hollering from me with my husband, David, shouting best of luck into the receiver.

In the weeks that followed, I would cruise though baby departments, breathe in the baby scent of pinks and blues, eye the Beatrix Potter plates and sigh over little bonnets.

In no time flat, good news would fly down the pike, I thought.

My phone calls to Star always began with, “Well? Well?”

But then several weeks passed.

There’s an unspoken etiquette in the face of no results. It’s a painfully long road for couples anxious to reach Destination: Babyland. Why add to their disappointment by bringing it up? Because my daughter’s anxiety was always just under the surface, I erased all baby talk from my conversations and thoughts – and I no longer haunted baby stores.

“I don’t belong here yet,” I sighed during an early farewell tour of Babies “R” Us.

Then one day, months later, Star called to say, “Guess what? I’m pregnant!”

At long last! The blissful shores of Grandparent Land had been sighted, but felt strangely numb. I had done such a dandy job of stifling myself that now I couldn’t pop my cork.

“Are you sure?” I said calmly.

Trained also to expect nothing, Star’s reaction was now one of suspicious disbelief.

“Mom, it doesn’t feel real,” she whispered.

“Oh, give it time. Carrying a front-loaded watermelon will change all that,” I said.

“I wish I felt morning sickness or something, just so I could believe it,” she complained.

I was the Wise Woman instructing the Little Grasshopper on the mystic ways of motherhood.

“Hey, don’t wish for that. I puked 17 times before seven in the morning when I was pregnant with you. Food was the worst. One time, there was a billboard with a Big Mac, and your dad had to pull over on the freeway so I could throw up,” I said.

It was fabulous bonding with her about maternity styles and “how the heck something that big comes out of you.”

Though we both remained stuck in our unreality rut, we reassured each other the moment would arrive when utter joy would finally sink in.

And it happened to me on my way to the restroom. I was at Macy’s when I passed through the baby section. Casually flipping through the infant racks, I was charmed by miniature fire trucks and dinosaurs, but it was the pink baby bunny suit that did me in.

Suddenly I hunched over the tiny hangers with tears streaming down my face. I was having a shoulder-bobbing (but quiet) crying jag of joy. Other customers tiptoed around me as I clutched the matching bunny hat and blubbered, “Oh, my God! I really belong here...”

E-mail Suzette Standring at suzmar@comcast.net. She is the author of "The Art of Column Writing" and is syndicated with GateHouse News Service.